Hung out to dry: Gilberto Baschiera’s unusual approach to loans led to an embezzlement charge, though he avoided a jail term.
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

A modern-day Robin Hood has avoided prison in Italy after stealing €1m from the current accounts of wealthy banking customers and distributing the money to the poor.

Gilberto Baschiera was working as a bank manager in the small town of Forni di Sopra, in the Dolomite Alps, north-east Italy, when a local man came to his office to apply for a small loan during the 2009 financial crisis. The man did not qualify for a loan, so, feeling sorry for him, Baschiera took some money from the account of a rich client and added it to the man’s account, allowing him to qualify.

News spread of Baschiera’s unusual approach, and soon other local people went to see him for otherwise hard-to-access credit. At no point did he take any money for himself. His lawyer, Roberto Mete, told the BBC that he had created “a kind of shadow financing system”.

Baschiera told his grateful customers that he was relying on them to repay the money, but some did not, leaving him exposed. “He trusted that the people he was helping were going to be able to pay back, and some of them didn’t,” Mete said.

The banker’s deeds were discovered by his employees and reported to the authorities. The prosecutor of Udine charged him with embezzlement and fraud.

This week Baschiera, 50, was sentenced to two years in prison, but because it was his first offence and the sentence relatively short, he will not serve the time.

However, it is not quite a happy ending. Baschiera is now unemployed and homeless since the police confiscated his house.

“He thinks he wouldn’t do it again,” Mete told the BBC. “He was convinced he could help people. But now he’s lost his job and his own home.”

Baschiera told the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera: “I just wanted to help people who couldn’t access loans … I would have returned all that money. I have always thought that in addition to protecting savers our task was to help those in need.”